ONE of the leading contenders to succeed Richard Brunstrom as Chief Constable of North Wales Police holds equally radical policing views, it has emerged.

The Deputy Chief Constable of Nottinghamshire Police, Howard Roberts, who is applying for Mr Brunstrom’s job, believes heroin should be prescribed to offenders as a crime prevention measure.

Mr Roberts made the comments at an Association of Chief Police Officers’ conference in Man- chester.

They echo the controversial views of Mr Brunstrom, a long-standing advocate of legalising all drugs.

Mr Brunstrom, 54, who retires in July, has also previously said heroin should be given to addicts to break the link with crime.

But as Brunstrom’s often outspoken tenure draws to a close, North Wales AM Mark Isherwood and local pressure group, People for Proper Policing, said there was no appetite in the region for another radical chief constable.

Mr Roberts, 51, from Anglesey, is regarded as one of the favourites to land the job because he served in the North Wales force for 18 years before joining Nottinghamshire and speaks Welsh.

In 2006, he told the conference prescribing heroin to addicts would cost £12,000 a year per addict, but said drug users steal property valued at an average of £45,000 a year.

At the time the idea was being piloted in London, the South-East and North of England and prescribing diamorphine (pharmaceutical heroin) is currently the subject of a national pilot scheme.

Mr Roberts said: “At the moment across the country we see levels of burglary, robbery and murder being committed by drug-fuelled addicts who are doing so in order to get the money to buy the drugs. One of the things I have found is that as a treatment it has been highly effective in actually helping to reduce crime.

“We’ve seen good levels of falls in drug-related acquisitive crime,” he added.

“However, there is still a considerable problem and what I am suggesting is that we need to explore, as part of a treatment programme, the prescribing of heroin to addicts in order to take them out of the illegal market.”

Mr Roberts, who is vice-chair of the ACPO drugs committee, said “getting people off drugs altogether must be the objective”, adding: “But I do believe that we have lived with the terrible consequences of relatively uncontained addiction for far too long.”

But Conservative AM Mr Isherwood said abstinence should be the aim of drugs policy and the North Wales public does not want another chief police office who ventures beyond a remit of law enforcement.

“Those within the criminal justice system who are substance misusing require treatment programmes aimed at abstinence rather than maintaining their substance misusing habits.”

PPP member Arthur Roberts said giving addicts heroin is too simplistic an approach to cutting crime.

Mr Roberts, 62, who runs a Llandudno scrap yard, said: “The best thing to reduce crime would be proper policing.

“The people of North Wales most certainly do not want another [chief constable with radical views on drugs].”

But Martin Blakebrough, chief executive of Newport drugs charity Kaleidoscope, said heroin should be offered to addicts who have not responded to treatment on substitutes like methadone.

He said: “I certainly think there is a case for people who have rejected methadone or other substitute.”

Mr Blakebrough, a member of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, added: “If you look at it as a crime reduction measure obviously we have to do something about those people who are not suitable for substitutional treatments otherwise they will commit crime to sustain their habit.”

A spokesman for Nottinghamshire Police said: “Mr Roberts is the vice chair of the ACPO drugs committee, a post he has held since 2005.

“In this role he is known in Nottinghamshire and nationally as having strong views on tackling drugs through enforcement and the importance of treatment issues.”

Meanwhile, North Wales Deputy Chief Constable Clive Wolfendale, 51, yesterday announced he was retiring from the force in September to become the chief executive of drugs and alcohol agency CAIS.

He will become Chief Constable of North Wales on a temporary basis until both his and Mr Brunstrom’s successors are appointed.